The new acting head of our national carrier, Nico Bezuidenhout, has been making headway in clearing up the financial woes of SAA, but admits that there’s still a lot of work to do.

SAA, much like its counterpart Eskom has been under gross mismanagement for so long that those of us paying taxes started thinking that it could never be fixed.

Then, along comes the South African Treasury and new acting CEO Nico Bezuidenhout and voila… results. Bezuidenhout took over as acting chief executive in December 2014 after Monwabisi Kalawe – who did nothing but bicker with board members instead of running the company – was suspended.

According to Bezuidenhout, their 90-day action plan aimed at cutting operational costs at SAA is showing results.

The core measures as set out in the action plan are:

Transferring SAA from the department of public enterprises to the treasury.

Re-negotiating contracts with suppliers, saving a total of R1.25 billion

Offering voluntary retrenchments also helped cut costs, although this wasn’t really part of the initial plan.

“It would be a mistake to say that we have fully turned the corner, but it is true though that our operating results for April and May were 40 percent better than the year before and our net results were 16 percent better than the year before,” said Bezuidenhout.

Although things are going better, Bezuidenhout made it clear that SAA still has a long way to go.